The serious business of pranks!

George N Netto

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The naughtier of our boyhood pranks — especially those that are memorably mischievous — remain indelibly etched in one’s memory even after the passage of several decades. These hoary recollections are sometimes revived by the not-so-entertaining pranks of today’s schoolboys!

I recall that the prefect of our all-boys boarding school in Tiruchy in the 1950s — a hardboiled Jesuit priest — was once visibly horrified to find a boarder clutching, in a vice-like grip, a gasping half-choked chameleon that was changing colours like a kaleidoscope. The sadist explained that he was merely showing his friends its ‘technicolor’, then a novelty in the era of black-and-white films!

One genius at school discovered that a rubber band entwined between one’s fingers made a handy mini-catapult capable of firing a wad of paper powerfully enough to jolt a snoozing backbencher awake. It was also ideal to snipe at old Benji — the projector operator and self-appointed guardian of our morals — during the monthly Western movie. He would conscientiously block out passionate kissing and other suggestive scenes with his palm lest these debased our impressionable minds — only to be irately (and anonymously) peppered by paper projectiles.

In the dormitory bed bugs used to torment us, needling one awake just as one was about to doze off. To settle old scores, one enterprising boarder once painstakingly filled a matchbox with bed bugs and released them in his archrival’s bedroll. That night we were treated to the hilarious spectacle of the harried victim repeatedly shooting up in bed and performing what seemed to be unintended and clumsily executed yoga asanas as he tried to rid himself of the parasites!

Of course, nothing could be more tempting to an inveterate prankster than to drop a wriggly lizard into the shirt of a studious student hunched over his homework — and gloatingly watch the mind-boggling contortions that followed as the victim frantically struggled to eject the intruder.

Bathtime was fun-time in the huge common bathroom where we had our daily ablutions under the prefect’s watchful eye. Clad in bathing trunks, we would luxuriate to our heart’s content under the 40-odd showers lining the length of the room on both sides. Sometimes, to liven up things, someone would sneak out and turn off the water mains, leaving the bathers howling with smarting eyes full of suds! It was only fear of the prefect’s dreaded cane that forestalled frequent repetition of this prank.

Those were the days of harsh corporal punishment administered painfully on one’s behind. To take the sting out of a flogging, one resourceful wrongdoer secretly layered his posterior with a piece of cardboard tucked away under his floppy shorts before presenting himself for punishment. And in the heat of the moment, the furious prefect never smelt a rat!